Les Miserables (悲慘世界)

I've heard of the much applauded film Les Miserables. Piqued by comments that it was such a tear jerker, I decided to see it for myself. The film's story is based on a declaredly "romantic"  1862 novel by the noted French poet and novelist Victor Hugo in which Jean Valjean, a convict just released from the Toulon prison on parole after serving 19 years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread to save his child from hunger and who had nothing but bitterness in his heart stole a silver from Bishop Digne, the local bishop who fed him and sheltered him for the night when he was suffering from cold and hunger after he failed time and again after his release in 1815 to find work because of his criminal record. He was caught and taken back to the bishop who said, much to his surprise, that he had given the silver to him as a gift. Deeply touched by the bishop's unconditional forgiveness and love, Valjean swore to live ever after an honest life and did so. After 8 years, he became the owner of a small factory and the mayor of a little French town Montreuil-sur-Mer. He had a worker Fantine who had to suffer all kinds of sexual harrassment from his foreman because she needed the money to support her illegitimate daughter Cosette whom she unwisely entrusted to the care of a pair of scheming and swindling vultures, the Thénardiers, running a house of pleasure. She had just received news that unless she paid more, the Thénardiers would throw Cosette out into the streets. At her wit's end, she bit her lips and started life as a prostitute to make up the difference and suffered all sorts of indignities on her first day. She was beaten up by a punkie customer who maligned her before the police but fortunately was rescued at the last moment by Valjean who was then just passing by. After learning of her plight, Valjean promised Fantine to look after Cosette for her and that he would treat Cosette as if she were his own daughter. Shortly thereafter, Fantine died from the wound inflicted upon her by her client at the hospital to which Valjean had taken her. Then the story fastforwarded to 1830 the time when Cosette was now a middle class teenage lady who fell in love with Marius, the son of a rich merchant who was sympathetic to the cause of the revolution because of all the injustices suffered by the poor of Paris. Lamarque, a good mayor who did his best for the poor had just died. There would be a funeral procession. Marius and his friends thought that the time was right for a revolution and prepared a barricade at the streets of their quarters hoping that the rest of the city's discontented elements would join in. The hoped for revolution failed. In the meantime, Javert, the prison officer who was in charge of the prison where Valjean served his sentence, now a police inspector , an unflinching believer in law and order and in justice and who had never once given up hope of bringing to Valjean to justice for breaking his  parole, had arrested a man whom he believed was Valjean and brought him before a judge. After learning about it and declaring his true identity before an unbelieving court, Valjean abandoned everything he had and lived again the life of a fugitive. He moved to another part of the town, planning  to escape to London but not before telling Marius his true identity and securing from him a promise to look after Cosette well but not to tell Cosette of his true identity for fear of hurting her. He hid in a convent to escape the dogged hunt by Javert, who had earlier blew his cover as a government spy amongst the student revolutionaries but was saved by Valjean from execution by the young revolutionaries. But before that, there was a gun fight between the advancing soldiers and Marius, during which Éponine, the daughter of the Thénardiers, who had to struggle with her own love for Marius to lead Marius to her rival Cosette, threw herself over the body of Marius to protect him from a flying bullet and suffered a fatal wound but not before she disclosed to him the secret that she did not hand to Cosette Marius's farewell letter to her before the revolution was about to begin and asked for forgiveness and that all she asked for now was to die in his arms which she did. Marius himself too was wounded but was saved by Valjean by dragging him through the Parisian sewers. But Valjean too died on the deathbed illusion that his spirit would be guided to heaven by those of the Bishop, Fantine,Éponine and the other revolutionaries. The film ends after Cosette got married to Marius and Javert jumped into the river to end his life because, completely broken by the conflict between his unswerving desire to serve "justice" and his "betrayal" of his ideal after he cornered Valjean again as he was emerging from the sewers with Marius and could have arrested or killed him, decided at the last moment to let him go.It was a moving story.

Les Misérables was turned into a film musical co-scripted by Alain Boubilil, Claude-Michel Schönberg and William Nicholson and Herbert Kretzmer, directed by  British director Tom Hooper, starring Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, Anne Hathaway as Fantine, Isabelle Allen (child) and Amanda Seyfried as Cosette, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham as the Thenardiers, Samanatha Barks as Éponine (Samantha Barks).Eddie Redmayne as Marius Pontmercy and Colm Wilkinson as the Bishop of Digne.

There was some spectacular cinema work eg. that at the start of the film and certain upward shots of Javert towering above the city but overall, the photography is unexceptional. The acting was good but not at all the singing. There's no rule that good actors are blessed also with singing talents. If the film failed to move me as much as it should, I must put it down to the quality of some of the chief protagonists singing e.g Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried. When singing, the actors didn't budge at all except when their voices appear off screen which I think would be a much better way of dealing with the songs.The flexibility of the film media was not exploited as much as it should but still it's not a bad way to while away nearly two hours in the dark of the cinema hall.The film does feature nearly all the songs from the original stage musical itself.